The entire disclosure of Japanese Patent Application No. 2009-073913, filed Mar. 25, 2009 is expressly incorporated herein by reference.
1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus and an image forming method. More specifically, the present invention relates to an apparatus and method for forming an image by developing a latent image using a liquid developer including toner and carrier, transferring the developer onto a medium such as recording paper, fusing and fixing the toner image transferred onto the medium.
2. Related Art
Various wet-type image forming apparatuses are currently known in the art which develop a latent image to form a electrostatic latent image using a high viscosity liquid developer using a toner comprising solid particles distributed in a liquid solvent. The developer used in the wet-type image forming apparatus obtained by suspending solid particles or toner particles in a high viscosity insulating organic solvent or carrier liquid comprising silicon oil, mineral oil, edible oil, and the like. The toner particles have a very small diameter of approximately 1 μm. Because such fine toner particles are used, the wet-type image forming apparatus can form an image having a higher quality than that of a dry-type image forming apparatus which uses powder toner particles having a particle diameter of about 7 μm. One example of a liquid developer currently known in the art is disclosed in Japanese Patent Document JP-A-2002-156839, which discloses an image forming apparatus including an image forming means for forming an electrostatic latent image on an image carrying member, a developing means for developing the electrostatic latent image on the image carrying member by using a developing solution in which developer particles are distributed in a solvent, an intermediate transfer medium which comes into contact with the image carrying member to transfer the visible image from the image carrying member, a backup member which comes into contact with the intermediate transfer medium, a transfer means for transferring the visible image from the intermediate transfer medium to a transferred body, a determining means for determining a type of the transferred body to which the visible image is transferred, a control means for variably controlling a pressing force against the transferred body by the backup member in accordance with the type of the transferred body determined by the determining means.
One problem with the image forming apparatus described in JP-A-2002-156839, however, is that the pressing means and backup member of the structure do not allow a concave portion to be provided in the backup member for housing a transfer material holding mechanism that holds the transfer material. More specifically, there is a problem that such a structure does not operate smoothly when the concave portion of backup member faces the intermediate transfer medium.